Albrecht Haller's love poem Doris

Posted by Richard on UTC 2018-10-29 08:30

Exculpatory preface

Last July, your author foolishly declared during his
less-than-magnificent essay on Klopstock's magnificent ode Der Zürchersee that he would consider at an appropriate moment Albrecht Haller's poem Doris (1730), which plays a walk-on part in Klopstock's poem. We are told that on the journey it was recited by Anna Maria Hirzel,
'Dr Hirzel's wife, young with very expressive blue eyes, who recited Haller's Doris incomparably wistfully'.

The calendar now tells us that that moment has come: 16 October 2018.
The foolishness of that declaration is now apparent: we are now going to
discuss in English a poem written in an 18th century German which might
even cause modern native speakers to pause.

Worse: the passage of time has left
Haller, his life, his work and his poetry largely unknown to modern readers, even
to native speakers of German, so we are going to have to spend more time on his
biography than we would have done for better known figures.

No boat trip will lift this
text; there is nothing at all here to photograph. Off we go.